Saturday, March 25, 2006

Smack My Bitch Up!

Over the years people have blamed Hip Hop for just about everything, If a cop gets killed the offender must have been listening to Pac, If someone shoots up a school they must have a Mars CD at home and of course if a women gets dissed, bashed or raped it's due to the way rappers talk about and treat women in their music..... but like Trinity Garden said "Don't Blame It On The Music".

One of the funniest things I remember about hip hop in the early '90's is the amount of reporters asking rappers "why do you call women bitches?", answers like "because they are", "i'm not talking about all women" and the funny metaphoric bullshit answers always made me laugh. Personally the way I look at it is, if you don't like what your hearing turn the shit off and stop bitching about it. A lot of the reason why rap gets a bad name is because of the amount of rappers that have physically assaulted females.One of the front runners in the campaign against disrespecting women in hip hop was female MC Queen Latifah who dropped the 'U.N.I.T.Y.' (Who You Calling A Bitch) single in about '93 and had a lot to do with Naughty By Nature's career in the early '90's. Naughty dropped the O.P.P. track about respecting women and in interviews was always talking about not calling women biches and hoes. I went to a Naughty concert in '96......... I wonder if Vinnie and Treach cut the article out of the newspaper the next morning for Latifah's scrap book?

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Everyone remembers 2 Pac punching a women for asking for an autograph and the bullshit case in the Manhattan hotel room in November '93 where Pac was charged with sodomizing a 20 year old girl with two other guys that Pac claims he didn't really know. He was sentenced to 1 and a half to 4 and a half years for sexual assault. Public Enemy's hype man, Flavor Flav got into trouble over hitting his girlfriend and there is the Dr Dre incident when he pushed 'Pump It Up' host Dee Barnes through a door at a club in 1991 for playing a sample of an Ice Cube line on the show while N.W.A. were guests. This made Dee Barnes hire Boo Yaa Tribes, Rook for protection (see article).

There are a countless amount of tracks that have offended womens groups over the years, I'm not even gonna get into the 2 Live Crew shit. Rappers like Too Short, Ice T and N.W.A. have always been targeted and questioned over their lyrics even though they're tame compared to some of the more underground artists like Q Strange who has tracks like 'Ain't No Bitch' (you don't wanna know what that tracks about) and countless others. On the other hand there are plenty of rappers that take the opposite approach and spend half an album singing wack love tracks like LL Cool James.

Even though there are a lot of female MC's sick of being called bitches and hoes there are also a heap that don't give a fuck and call themselves one on every second line or so, like Boss who dropped a track called 'My Sister Is A Bitch' - a duet with AMG that was released both on her 'Born Gangstaz' album and his 'Bitch Better Have My Money' album. Former Rap-A-Lot female rapper Choice (who was spotted by R.A.L. C.E.O. James Smith in a talent show where she was just playing around and ended up getting signed released the album 'Stick-N-Move') had no problem being referred to as a bitch, just as well too, because after she dropped the album with a diss to label mate Willie D Rap-A-Lot dropped her and Geto Boy dissed her back real good.

Without going into too much detail about what female rappers hate being called bitches and what ones don't care, here is an interview between Sister Souljah, Dee Barnes and The Poetess from a 'Women Of Rap' special edition of Rap Pages from October '92.

I couldn't leave this post without giving you a taste of what has made womens groups around the world grit their teeth ever since the 2 Live Crew dancers hit the stages all fish netted out back in the late '80's.... Enjoy!